There's No Other Poll: Let's rank the Blur albums

At this exact moment, I'm really torn between Parklife, Blur, and 13. Can't vote yet.

Blur and maybe 13 will turn out to be their lasting work.

Parklife for me

s/t or... think tank

Really want throw a sympathy vote to either Leisure or The Great Escape, since I think both are about fifty-billion times better than everyone says they are. But really, this is Modern Life all the way.

MLIR was close for me, and I also really like The Great Escape

13 > MLIR > TGE > Blur > Leisure > Parklife > TT > TMW

my thing with 13 is that i don't really like "tender" so it's hard to... listen to an album that starts with it

yeah I always start with Bugman

I rode 13 hard when I was coming out and hopelessly in love

more controversially I also like to skip No Distance Left To Run because he's already made his big breakup meltdown point much better on 1992 and Trimm Trabb really is the record's climax

'11' doesn't quite have the same ring though

TMW was dire, the best example of why bands shouldn't reform from the last 10 years at least.

yep

apart from the opening track and 'go out' maybe

13 > MLIR > TGE > Blur > Leisure > Parklife > TT > TMW

I'd already totally forgotten that The Magic Whip existed and was baffled as to what 'TMW' referred to for a good few seconds there

gonna vote for think tank bc i love that record most than i guess almost everyone

My order would probably be..

Modern Life Is Rubbish - The only Blur album where I don't want to skip any of the songs.

Parklife - I never need to hear the title track again. I could probably lose The Debt Collector and Magic America too. It does also include many of their finest moments and Trouble In The Message Centre which has been my favourite Blur song since I got into them over 20 years ago.

13 - The singles are some of the weakest songs but Trailer Park is the only real dud. Caramel is one of the best songs they've ever done.

Think Tank - This album is ridiculously uneven. Sweet Song, Ambulance, Out Of Time and Battery In Your Leg are all so perfect. Brothers & Sisters, Crazy Beat and Jets are some of the worst songs they've made.

The Great Escape - The ballads are what save this album for me. Best Days, The Universal, He Thought Of Cars and Yuko & Hiro are all beautiful. Entertain Me is great too with a brilliant bass line from Alex. I could definitely live without Top Man, Charmless Man and a couple of songs on the second half.

Blur - This sounded amazing at the time but has aged really badly. Beetlebum, Death Of A Party and Strange News From Another Star are the main keepers.

The Magic Whip - Four decent songs and a whole lot of filler. The songs would be better if Damon had bothered to come up with some interesting vocal melodies.

Leisure - Sing is the only song I go back to. I don't even really enjoy the singles.

This seriously boils down to either Modern Life Is Rubbish or Blur for me, and since the former falls off a little in the second half, I'll go with the latter.

All of the rest are a mix of tracks that are either great or terrible, with the ratio of great-to-terrible tracks varying from LP to LP. Aside from Parklife, which has aged terribly.

Modern Life Is Rubbish is one of my favourite albums of all time so that gets my vote.

MLIR > Parklife > Blur > TT > 13 > TMW > TGE > Leisure

I feel bad ranking Great Escape so low because The Universal is amazing and there are a couple of other really good songs but the rest of it ranges from OK to terrible.

gonna vote for think tank bc i love that record most than i guess almost everyone

I would like it and the s/t about evenly were it not for "Crazy Beat" which really is just shit

The Great Escape - The ballads are what save this album for me. Best Days, The Universal, He Thought Of Cars and Yuko & Hiro are all beautiful.

otm

13 easily!

Is vote for the singles collection if I could.

Those in between tracks made the album feel like the best kind of kaleidoscopic mess when I was a teenager

I would like it and the s/t about evenly were it not for "Crazy Beat" which really is just shit

― a serious and fascinating fartist (Simon H.), Tuesday, March 21, 2017 3:07 PM (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

without "crazy beat" it's a great introverted funk record with gorgeous ballads so yes

Ok, I've decided to vote for the self-titled album. Here's my ranking:

1. Blur - So many great tracks, from "Beetlebum" to "Strange News" to "On Your Own" to "MOR." Of all the Blur albums, this and "13" took the longest to grow on me. The hooks and melodies eventually sank in. From start to finish, their most complete and range-y.

2. 13 - Of all their albums, "13" feels the most of a single piece. I especially love how the back half segues and blends together in a melancholy fog. A couple songs are definitely skippable (ahem, "Swamp Song"), but some of the band's all-time highs are here: "No Distance Left to Run," "Coffee & TV," "Caramel."

3. Parklife - Catchy as hell, moves along quickly and joyfully. And my first exposure to Blur, as a 7th grader, when "Girls & Boys" hit modern rock radio.

4. Think Tank - It's despised in some quarters, but "Good Song," "On the Way to the Club," and "Battery in Your Leg" rival their best, earlier work. And "Ambulance" has some of Albarn's most powerful lyrics: "I was born out of love / It's the only way to come into this world / I know I'm not all there / But I'm getting, getting, getting there."

5. The Great Escape - Would rank higher if it wasn't so bloated and looooong. It loses its steam somewhere around "Ernold Same" but picks up again with the dynamite "Entertain Me." "Country House" won the Battle of Britpop? I would've gone with "The Universal."

6. Modern Life is Rubbish - It's all memorable and catchy, but for some reason it never sticks. Too thin and same-y. I only return to "Turn it Up" with some regularity. But I know many consider it their absolute best.

[big drop]

7. Leisure - The two big hits, "There's No Other Way" and "She's So High," are great. Would also give props to "I Know" and "Sing" (depending on which country you bought the album in). The rest is forgettable.

8. The Magic Whip - Someone said it best upthread... lots of filler surrounding a couple decent songs. And bands shouldn't take a decade off and come back. "Lonesome Street" is the highlight.

I'd have almost always gone with Parklife but I think the s/t is the only one that's aged anywhere close to gracefully

I guess I'm in the minority, but I always found the sudden shift from "britpop Blur" to "we wanna be Pavement now" Blur very disturbing, and as a result really haven't enjoyed anything post-TGE

13 is the only album that's not really uneven and is their best by a long way. Half of Think Tank is some of their very best but the other half is pretty forgettable. The Magic Whip is dreadful, reunion albums can be pretty risky but I was never expecting it to be as bad as it was.

13
Blur
Think Tank
Parklife
Modern Life is Rubbish
The Great Escape
Leisure
The Magic Whip

13 is definitely uneven, probably one of their most uneven, I'd say. Assuming we're talking about the same 13 here, the one with 'Swamp Song' and 'Trailer Park' on it.

my ranking

self-titled
13 tied with parklife
everything else

"Trailer park" is excellent, I love it when Blur go trip-hop.

I don't like "Clint Eastwood" though, even though it's got a similar groove as Trailer Park. TP has such a warm understated arrangement/production

I... thought Magic Whip was great. So much beautiful detail in the arrangements. What's the correct number of years between albums?

That might be a good topic for a new thread.. what's the longest span between two albums from a band that were actually decent on either end of the hiatus.

...rather, both ends of the hiatus

mbv, next

Yeah, the MBV follow up wasn't a letdown

The Magic Whip was especially disappointing because the two Parklife-esque tracks they did in 2012 were decent enough and there wasn't really a drop in quality from Blur to Gorillaz (though Everyday Robots was pretty awful and is closest to The Magic Whip)

I'll take an EP of the best four or five songs on The Magic Whip over the entirety of Everyday Robots.

Blur is funny for me, i own all their albums expect the one from last year and about 25 singles. loved them at the time but never have the desire to play them now. even when we were running the Blur poll i thought it would be a good time to listen all over again. i never did get around to it and ended up not submitting a ballot.

voting Modern Life.

Parklife > Blur > Modern Life is Rubbish > The Great Escape > 13 > Think Tank > The Magic Whip

I've never bothered to listen to Leisure.

Think Tank is one of those albums would be perfect if only it weren't for a few utter crap songs like Crazy Beat

all the same remains my fave, gets my vote.and Out of Time is fantastic

This thread has made me pull out my Blur albums. Never realized how much "Mr. Robinson's Quango" sounds like Syd Barrett's "Octopus"

never understood the love for parklife, i was quite disappointed when it came out. "modern life is rubbish" gets my vote, it hit me directly in the guts, there is an englishness to it i love. "13" is almost as good but it impressed me slightly less, maybe it was too close to prog-rock for my liking.

I like "The Magic Whip" would place it in the middle probably.

Having said that, I don't want any more.

never understood the love for parklife

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Wednesday, March 22, 2017 1:31 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It might just be a case of first exposure to the band leaving the biggest impression, but Parklife seems to highlight their strengths. It has some of their best drone-y ballads ("This Is A Low", "To The End"), zany interstitials ("Lot 105", "Bank Holiday"), Kink-y slice of life songs ("Tracy Jacks", "End Of A Century"). As an album, it's fun and it gorgeous. Whenever someone says another band/song sounds like Blur, they're not talking about "13" or "Think Tank", they're talking about Parklife. Plus, "Girls & Boys" -- I could vote for it on that song alone.

Yeah, its 'one for all the family' innit?

13 was the first and only album by this band I listen to. Pretty remarkable record all things considered. Tender is all time for me.

Kinda sad that nobody (save Mark G) likes Magic Whip. I find it beautiful and satisfying. Would never claim it as their best, but for a long time to come it'll be my favourite to listen to just on account of it being fresher.

This thread has prompted me to do a highly-subjective Spotify list of songs by this band that I am still happy to listen to and don't set my teeth on edge. Surprising amount off of Think Tank actually:

https://open.spotify.com/user/1153731601/playlist/7BjfkncJBdfSK1L79CWu4d

I have a lot of time for Blur's b-sides.

Here are my Top 10 Blur b-sides:

1. Young and Lovely
2. Polished Stone
3. Theme From An Imaginary Film
4. One Born Every Minute
5. When The Cows Come Home
6. All Your Life
7. Supa Shoppa
8. A Song
9. St Louis
10. Peach

Young And Lovely could have been an A-side really

Black Book is my favourite Blur b-side and also their longest song

Are you trying to PVMIC yourself here?

(I don't think I've heard Black Book)

Listening now... Hmmm it reminds me of Susan's House by Eels.

Y&L is p much just as good though yeah

it really is. Coxon's guitar is especially detailed. For me, that's what make Blur Blur, more than any Albarnisms, it's Coxon's guitar-style that lends it to these songs.

Yes, and hopefully you got to the bit of Black Book where Coxon takes it to the next level :p

Here are the results of the ILM big Blur poll from a while back. Some very interesting placements here. Badhead at 6 and Blue Jeans beating out The Universal show that even their most understated deep-cuts were quality. Out Of Time bringing TT out of its perceived slump. Loads of great B-sides (good to see Theme From An Imaginary Film do so well - I really like that song).

1 This Is A Low 585
2 For Tomorrow 490
3 Beetlebum 469
4 End Of A Century 370
5 Sing 357
6 Badhead 340
7 Out Of Time 303
8 Girls & Boys 296
9 Blue Jeans 274
10 The Universal 264
11 Tracy Jacks 264
12 Coffee & TV 255
13 On Your Own 251
14 To The End 238
15 Tender 231
16 Trimm Trabb 220
17 Best Days 216
18 Chemical World 205
19 Clover Over Dover 196
20 Trouble in the Message Centre 193
21 Yuko & Hiro 190
22 There's No Other Way 189
23 He Thought Of Cars 181
24 Popscene 177
25 Death of a Party 168
26 Battery In Your Leg 152
27 Oily Water 149
28 Resigned 149
29 Theme From An Imaginary Film 148
30 Battle 144
31 Sweet Song 134
32 Young & Lovely 134
33 Caramel 123
34 Advert 122
35 Me, White Noise 121
36 Bugman 120
37 You're So Great 120
38 Entertain Me 117
39 She's So High 115
40 All Your Life 114
41 Starshaped 112
42 Strange News From Another Star 111
43 No Distance Left To Run 100
44 Country Sad Ballad Man 99
45 Song 2 98
46 Essex Dogs 97
47 1992 87
48 Ambulance 84
49 Charmless Man 77
50 Parklife 75
51 Country House 69
52 Miss America 69
53 Inertia 62
54 Globe Alone 58
55 Coping 53
56 Magic America 53
57 One Born Every Minute 52
58 When The Cows Come Home 52
59 Colin Zeal 51
60 Intermission 51
61 Moroccan Peoples Revolutionary Bowls Club 51

On Your Own is such a good single, oft forgotten

"Don't Be" and "Music is My Radar" were also great b-sides from the Think Tank era

sorry... "Money Makes Me Crazy." "Music is My Radar" is from the 2000 comp. But a great non-album cut as well.

those poll results are interesting, 13 seems fairly ignored - Caramel at 33 is so low. wouldn't have expected Sing quite that high either.

Black Book is great, has to be one of their most underrated tracks. Music is My Radar is quite good too, wish they'd been able to explore that direction a bit more

Think Tank is one of those albums would be perfect if only it weren't for a few utter crap songs like Crazy Beat

all the same remains my fave, gets my vote.and Out of Time is fantastic

― niels, Wednesday, March 22, 2017 10:27 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hell yeah twins

"on the way to the club" is suuuuuch a good song

as is "caravan" holy shit i nearly forgot

"Caravan" is one of their best songs, the...melodicas?...or whatever that come in are so beautiful

yeah that part!!!!

really upset that they felt the need to put "we got a file on you" on this record though. why do they have one of these per record starting with the s/t

also the synths in "moroccan" sound like they came from a kraftwerk record or something, man do they rule

"sweet song"!!!! ok i'll stop

Out Of Time with Graham was amazing at Hyde Park, that's my preferred version now.

Blur is funny for me, i own all their albums expect the one from last year and about 25 singles. loved them at the time but never have the desire to play them now. even when we were running the Blur poll i thought it would be a good time to listen all over again. i never did get around to it and ended up not submitting a ballot.

voting Modern Life.

― To Live and Die In L.A. (Bee OK), Wednesday, March 22, 2017 5:01 AM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

To be quite honest - and this has been hammered home to me by revisiting some of this stuff, which I haven't heard in years in some cases - I'm pretty much in a similar boat regarding this band. At the time I was quite a big fan and played the shit out of all of their albums to varying degrees, and I still do think they were one of the better bands of that period alongside Pulp, Suede, Oasis and of course Radiohead. Some, but not all, of Blur's work (even strictly talking about singles and album tracks here) retains its appeal, particularly the ballads. However, I very rarely have the desire to listen to this band these days and haven't done for quite a long time if I'm to be really honest with myself. I think that for every track that has aged well, there's another three or four which have aged terribly. I'm not just talking about their "knees up around the Joanna" period either, some of which grates on me intensely these days - their later years have a fair amount of self-indulgent meandering bullshit in the name of "experimentation" too.

I'd say I could easily put together a playlist of a couple of hours worth of music that Blur put out that would be incredible, and at the time I thought a lot of this music wouldn't age as terribly as it has done. However, that is the case and as the years advance, it's clear to me that unless there's some sort of revival around the corner that somehow makes some of this stuff "cool" again, the time for Blur's music has long passed. The cheeky chappieisms of 'Parklife', with its Phil Daniels cameo, sound ancient to me, part of an era that is so far in the rearview mirror it can't be fucking seen anymore.

Funnily enough, the Bowie/Roxy-isms of Suede and Pulp have aged far, far better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsedPxv-3_U

wow this sweet song demo is lovely

i even like "jets" but it hits the sweet spot for me of "enormous bassline + sax solo"

As for The Magic Whip - if Blur ever were going to get back together, reform with Graham and record and release new material, the most sensible time to do it would have been around 2005-2006 when people still really gave a shit on the scale they once did. Even the reformation in 2009, as excited as some got about it, was too late. Various people had moved on by then - much of their fanbase, even Damon Albarn himself (let's face it, he wasn't really that arsed about doing a new Blur record, was he?) - The Magic Whip was about 10 years too late.

if graham coxon could only be on one song on think tank i'm sure glad it's the one where his guitar sounds like it's swallowing the earth

"Battery In Your Leg" might be their best closer (when you remember that "This Is a Low" technically isn't one)

Nah, 'Battery In Your Leg' is their best closer. I always thought that 'This Is a Low' was immensely overrated even back in the mid '90s, as far as Albarn ballads goes it's mid-tier, I think.

really upset that they felt the need to put "we got a file on you" on this record though. why do they have one of these per record starting with the s/t

― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson), Thursday, March 23, 2017 5:22 PM (twenty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This has long bean a bugbear of mine but I think you can trace it back even further to 'Bank Holiday' on Parklife and 'Globe Alone' on TGE.

*been

Yeah, they've been attempting "punk"-style numbers on their records as far back as Modern Life in Rubbish - 'Advert', 'Bank Holiday', 'Globe Alone', 'Chinese Bombs', 'B.L.U.R.E.M.I.' and 'We've Got a File On You' - and all of 'em are highlights of the albums they're from, IMO.

blur closers better than TIAL or BIYL:

essex dogs
yuko & hiro
resigned

admittedly all three have a fair claim to being their best song ever

'slow down' is leisure's punker btw, and it's amazing

"White Light" -- great punk number from the second Gorillaz album

I like both 'Essex Dogs' and 'Yuko & Hiro', but I've always thought 'Resigned' was a bit of a borefest - it's not really much of a song, and doesn't have enough to it to justify its length.

voted s/t as it's the only blur album i've ever really loved. patchy in retrospect, but i still love about half of it. 13's good too.

revisiting 13 for the first time in years... idk, maybe i like it more than the s/t in a way bc the way it spreads out and pursues its ideas so thoroughly that it ends up in v strange places is attractive. the guitar in "trailerpark" is enough to save it imo. "swamp song" isn't great but i even sort of like how it's trying to be the laziest thing possible

even "tender" is an idea pursued to the limits of its own taste (pathos generated in rock ballad through gospel choir) and i can appreciate it from that angle

it's weird that 13 opens with probably their most open-armed pop moment considering what follows

Well, there's two ways of looking at it. Another is that 13 opens with an "idea" ("hey! I listened to this Spiritualized record last night while getting smacked up and, uh...") that is "pursued" beyond its natural limits. Like, "hey, yeah, just keep this going, it felt like the song should have ended two minutes ago, but fuck it, let's keep going anyway..."

Tender is the only song on 13 that doesn't unspool gracefully and elegantly to a satisfying conclusion tbh

Well, there's two ways of looking at it. Another is that 13 opens with an "idea" ("hey! I listened to this Spiritualized record last night while getting smacked up and, uh...") that is "pursued" beyond its natural limits. Like, "hey, yeah, just keep this going, it felt like the song should have ended two minutes ago, but fuck it, let's keep going anyway..."

― Coolio Iglesias (Turrican), Thursday, March 23, 2017 12:32 PM (twelve minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, right

anyway, "caramel" is the best blur song

I don't know about the best Blur song, but it's the standout track on 13, IMO. It's one of those tracks where everything gels together really well and it just works. There are portions of 13 which don't work so well... 'Tender' is overlong, 'Swamp Song' takes the riff from Siouxsie and the Banshees' 'Arabian Knights' and does absolutely fuck all with it, I still think they could have got a better version of 'Battle' ...

Turn It Up being the best thing on MLIR just... what? Really? Worst thing they've ever done IMO, stain on an otherwise wonderful LP

I don't think I'd ever heard "Caramel" before. It's GREAT.

Blur is a band I generally like on paper much more than in practice but when things click for me (There's No Other Way, This Is A Low, Music Is My Radar, Song 2, apparently Caramel), they are phenomenal.

13 is one of the best albums of all time.

I went completely batshit over 13 when it came out. Still like it, but I don't think this band has a "best" album. I like pretty much all of them (tailing off near the end of the run) depending on mood. 13 was a pretty great surprise though, when it came out, so I'll give it my vote. Have to add that Ray of Light/13 was a pretty nice producer's run.

13 is the only blur album I've ever heard because a colleague of my father's got given it for a present and didn't like it and it ended up being given to me.

i did quite like it at the time. i struggle to remember any of the songs on it now bar tender, coffee and tv, and, for whatever, reason battle.

blur are still shite basically

Blur is funny for me, i own all their albums expect the one from last year and about 25 singles. loved them at the time but never have the desire to play them now.

Same for me. I even invested in the limited edition anniversary box set back in the day.

ray of light -> 13 -> pure shores :)

"Caramel" was the song in which I immersed myself at the end of my last straight relationship and my realizing I was gay. It's good for that sort of thing.

and oh hey I came up with a best-of two months ago.

I ran that Blur tracks poll back in 2011 and was really excited to see the reformed band for that gig in Hyde Park on the last day of the Olympics in 2012, but I've scarcely listened to them in the last few years and had no interest at all in The Magic Whip - played youtubes of a couple of songs, thought they were shit and didn't pay any attention beyond that. Still, I'll waste the next half hour quickly revisiting the albums...

Leisure - I had no interest in Blur in 1991, never bought this and don't really know it beyond the three really famous songs off it

Modern Life Is Rubbish - listening back, I am genuinely surprised to find I love nearly all of this. For some reason in my head I just associated it with the annoying wackiness at the end of Chemical World and stuff like Sunday Sunday, but that's not representative at all. Best bit is Oily Water followed by Miss America.

OK, this is obviously going to take longer than I realised and I can't stay up all night so I'll come back to this. Just sorted my iTunes to see what I had listened to most since 2009 and, surprisingly, it's Think Tank tracks at the top:
https://flic.kr/p/SCv5uh

Hmmmm. Let's have another go:
https://c1.staticflickr.com/4/3939/33230905600_1425e019a2.jpg

Just did a sort of the most-played Blur songs on my Itunes...

1. There's No Other Way
2. Lonesome Street (I think Magic Whip was the first album I got on this laptop)
3. Girls & Boys
4. Song 2
5. Ambulance

Turn It Up being the best thing on MLIR just... what? Really? Worst thing they've ever done IMO, stain on an otherwise wonderful LP

Ha.. all I said it was the song I most returned to. I concede it sounds nothing like the rest of the album and feels tacked on. But it gets me in a good mood.

If I remember correctly, the band were toying with the idea of releasing 'Caramel' as a single but chickened out. I often wonder what would have happened if they'd just went for it and put it out as the first single without even bothering to make a radio edit or anything, just as Radiohead did with 'Paranoid Android' ... it would have been far more representative of the album than either 'Tender' or 'Coffee & TV', I think. My favourite part of the track undoubtedly is the ending section where Rowntree plays that skittering rhythm while Damon smothers echoing falsetto over the track, and feeling of release when that part kicks in.

also the synths in "moroccan" sound like they came from a kraftwerk record or something, man do they rule

― the raindrops and drop tops of lived, earned experience (BradNelson), jueves 23 de marzo de 2017 17:24 (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Are they not? I always thought they were sampling Autobahn (or is it Neoicht?) in that one. My favorite think tank song as well.

lol well it'd make sense if they literally are

I don't really hear the comparison, although I do agree that 'Moroccan People's Revolutionary Bowls Club' is one of the highlights of Think Tank. Some folks are seriously down on that record, but I think the rest of the band compensated for their guitarist not being around quite well. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that Damon's amateurish guitar playing really suits the tracks and I think sonically it's a very good record - I think it's one of their best sounding records.

would probably need to relisten to '93-97 to vote, instinct says Modern Life or Parklife

I think it's one of their best sounding records
this is otm and one of the reasons I keep coming back to it, it's def a sonic outlier, you enter a wholly different room w Think Tank

this is also why crazy beat is so offensive (we apparently have Fatboy Slim to blame for that particular production choice)

surprised to hear Orbit produced 13, can't say I've listened much to it but I don't remember those Orbit trademarks - ethereal space, electronic drums, ghostly synths

it does make sense that Sweet Song is an Orbit production though

There's plenty not to like about Blur, but one thing that's genuinely great about them is that we could all make different 'Best of' compilations, and they would all be very different.

its funny that the actual "Blur Best-of" has the same first two tracks as the "Self-titled' album

madness that they never finished this, although it sounds like bits of The Universal and Tender. such a good idea for a song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GA-KZemlev8

I think there's far, far worse songs in Blur's discography than 'Crazy Beat', which I've always found to be the complete opposite of offensive. Even now, I still don't quite get what's meant to be so awful about it or what makes it stand apart from other Blur songs of the same ilk as something particularly awful.

While it's true that we could all make different "best of" compilations, and they'd all be very different, I still think that this band have obvious classics which you'd find featuring on most of 'em.

I've just been thinking about this band, and two things have sprung to mind... one is that I can't think of another band of the era where all the band members were equally unlikeable, yet they somehow managed to put out some genuinely beautiful music. Secondly, it's amazing how much their career looks calculated in hindsight.

xp - what would those be? I cannot think of one completely consensus pick.

While it wouldn't make my personal "best of", I can pretty much guarantee that 'This Is a Low' would make it onto most of 'em. 'For Tomorrow', 'Sing', 'Beetlebum', 'Badhead', 'The Universal' and 'Blue Jeans' easily.

and possibly 'Caramel' and 'Out of Time', too.

Hm, not convinced, sorry, don't know if even two of those would be on my CDR

Blur tracks poll - the RESULTS thread

Looks like I wasn't too far off!

Wow, there's a (to me) surprising amount of dislike of The Magic Whip on here! The several Blur fans I know & myself included were all very impressed by it. I find My Terracotta Heart somewhat whiny (but not too off-putting) and the bit in Ghost Ship where Damon sings 'HONG KONG' annoys me, but I can find little wrong with the album apart from that.

Blur were pretty much my first big love in music, I got into them after Parklife was released, I was 14 then. Loved it all and For Tomorrow more than anything, which made MLIR my default favourite for a long time.

Nowadays I think I'd rank the albums as such:
Blur > MLIR > Parklife > TMW > Think Tank > 13 > Leisure > TGE
...and I enjoy it -almost- all the way to the end.

Leisure: Sing is gorgeous; I love Come Together and Wear Me Down; the singles are pretty good, especially There's No Other Way. But there's weaker stuff as well. I've always disliked Fool

Modern Life Is Rubbish and Parklife: two classics which are some of the greatest albums released in the Britpop era (one that was very important to me) and feature loads of amazing songs. I keep changing my mind over which of the two albums I prefer. I remember listening to Parklife recently and thinking that every song (save maybe for the instrumentals) was memorable in a good way. I have to say that I'm not overly fond of 'Tracy Jacks' or 'Jubilee', but there's times where I'm enjoying the hell out of those too.
Absolute highlights: For Tomorrow, Star Shaped, Coping, Badhead, End Of A Century, To The End, Trouble In The Message Center, This Is A Low.

The Great Escape... this is the one album I have strong issues with. Way too overproduced and overdone, waaay too annoying - I think it's got too much of the 'Dan abnormal, not normal at all!' in-your-face attitude as a disguise for mediocrity.
I remember hearing some early live versions of Country House, Mr Robinson's Quango and Globe Alone and they were so, so much more promising in those energetic, fiery performances than how they ended up on the album. It was all a huge disappoinment to me, which I couldn't even admit to myself back when I was a kid (couldn't believe they could come up with such a lesser record), that probably made me want to distance myself from the album even more afterwards. I hardly ever listen to it, I tend to get annoyed when I do.

Blur: I adore every little bit on this album. Just going to name one song as my highest highlight, which is Strange News From Another Star.

13: I want to have this higher in my ranking because there's so much beauty on it. But there's some annoying stuff too, like Bugman.
No Distance Left To Run is very pretty but it often makes me think of Matt Lucas & David Walliams 'Rock Profile' parody song.
Lots of people seem to have Trimm Trabb as their fave off the album. I like it but never noticed it all that much more than the other good songs on the album. I've always had a soft spot for Trailerpark (I think I might be a bit alone on that one).

Think Tank: a bit like 13: a lot of good stuff mixed in with some annoying bits here and there, which is why it comes somewhat later in the list. The Crazy Beat intro is the worst offender for me.
Like MLIR and Parklife, I find it hard to rank Think Tank and 13 as opposed to one another.

The Magic Whip: as I wrote at the start of my post, I find it a very impressive comeback with a lot of fantastic songs. New World Towers and Pyonyang are my favourites here, even if the latter sounds a lot like Blur doing Elbow.

PS anyone heard the early demo of For Tomorrow, which is featured on one of the rarities discs in the Blur 21 box set? It originally sounded like Space Oddity - a bit too much trying-to-be-Bowie but it's gorgeous.
Also interesting is the 'Electric' version of Far Out - it would have been such an awesome single! I wonder if Damon got the chipmunk voices in so he wouldn't be be upstaged by Alex.

The Magic Whip: as I wrote at the start of my post, I find it a very impressive comeback with a lot of fantastic songs. New World Towers and Pyonyang are my favourites here, even if the latter sounds a lot like Blur doing Elbow.

Heh, I think it sounds more like Japan than Elbow, which is a huge reason why I think it's one of the highlights of the record. 'New World Towers' is a dud, IMO, and it kills the momentum of the album being placed as the second track, too.

Trimm Trabb reminded me too much of the Shake n' Vac advert.

Which bit!?!

Struggling to do this. I've re-listened to everything and I don't really know. How do you judge an album: is the best one the one with the highest highs or the one which is the most consistent? I don't really listen to albums any more, I haven't done for years, so I tend to forget that each of these albums has got some rubbish on it.

I'm going to put 'Blur' and 'The Great Escape' below 'Parklife', 'Modern Life Is Rubbish', '13' and 'Think Tank', in the case of the former because once you get beyond the tracks that I really like (Beetlebum, Death of a Party, Country Sad Ballad Man) it feels a bit thrown together and half-arsed, and in the case of the latter, the highs aren't really that high.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Blur
Modern Life Is Rubbish
Parklife
The Great Escape
Think Tank
13
The Magic Whip
Leisure

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebRfvAsrwxY

^ This is fantastic. The Magic Whip tracks stand nicely against the hits.

I am well aware I will be in a minority of one on this but for me it is Leisure. While its not my favourite album in the world ever there is a less of an overarching smug self awareness on this record and the songs work by themselves on a more basic level without the need for any sort of pompous attempt at le grande concept or vain clutching at addressing the zeitgeist, be voices of a generation etc, etc After Leisure, despite the odd good song, I reckon they largely disappeared up there own backsides completely.

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from with that... Leisure is riddled with flaws, but the members of Blur have never really been a particularly likeable bunch of people, so I can understand why the record that has the least amount of the band members' personalities in it would have an appeal for some people.

You know what's good off of Leisure? 'Wear Me Down'

The things about 13 that I return to:

1. The opening track *is* overly long, but that works well in context, as it's very straightforward and leads into an album that's anything but. Sort of drags out the normality of things as long as it can.
2. Immediate move into Bugman (and they hadn't done anything like that before, and no Song 2 doesn't count) is a major indication that this album is going to be a weird ride.
3. Next move to Coffee & TV which is the weirdly chorded "hit" video. Basically album is saying that even at the most accessible, we're still going to be pretty far out.
4. Swamp Song through Trimm Trabb is kind of the meat of the album, where Orbit goes bananas.
5. No Distance Left To Run is the somewhat exhausted end to all of this.

In general, album starts out like Rolling Stones, but so repetitive that you realize something is wrong/off. Then goes out into wierdsville. Then returns on the last song. Back to Rolling Stones Territory, but with some humility.

I don't consider myself a huge blur fan, but was completely blown away by 13 on release, and it still holds up. I like all their other albums to varying extents, and Parklife might in fact be the one that they always wanted to make, but 13 is the one that makes them great, after the warmup of blur. Producer (Orbit) coming off of one of the best production jobs of all time, probably deserves a lot of credit.

Hmm. I wish I could say that I was completely blown away by 13 on release but truth be told, I wasn't. I'd really enjoyed Blur and still consider it to be one of their finest ever records, however when 'Tender' came out as a single I thought it was okay, but not really anything much more than that. When I finally heard the album, I enjoyed about half of it but disliked the production and thought a lot of it sounded half-baked. I got the impression that they weren't really trying. My view of the album is a lot more favourable now, and I really love the use of stereo on the album (it's a great headphones record) but I go to it for select tracks and never listen to the whole thing. I still think that the record could have been better and the band could have been more focused - e.g. the final version of 'Battle', I truly believe that could have been much better.

I was blown away on release. In fact I was already blown away in the record shop before I bought the CD when I started listening on headphones. Isn't this a little bit their "Abbey Road"? It is such a rich album. Somehow it is a step further than just rock music. It is a trip.

That's a bit of an unfair comparison, really. Abbey Road is one of the greatest albums ever made, and 13... isn't.

13 belongs in the bracket of post-britpop millennial ambition with idk OK Computer, Six and other things I probably like too much

The Beta Band s/t

Radiator

Yeah, I'd totally put it in the same bracket as OK Computer and Six. Everything Picture, too.

The Beta Band, yes. I'd say Guerrilla rather than Radiator, though.

Everything sodding Picture XPOSTS

British guitar music was just leaping off the cliff and then The Strokes came along and ruined it: A Cockeyed Narrative I Just Came Up With

Also Travis

If I remember correctly, the NME tried to launch a movement in the late '90s called "nu-psychedelia", their theory being that popular guitar bands from the UK at the time (I'm not using the 'B' word, it's a useless word that doesn't mean anything) were moving away from making pop albums and starting to experiment with the potential of ProTools etc. in the same way that bands "went psychedelic" in 1967-1968. It didn't take off. Many of these bands couldn't or struggled to take their mainstream audience with them, for one.

In terms of American bands, I guess you could say The Flaming Lips (with Zaireeka and The Soft Bulletin) were pointing towards that kind of thing, too. It's funny, because The Boo Radleys were trying their level best to make this kind of music when everyone was listening to The Great Escape and (What's The Story) Morning Glory? but kept being slagged off as being difficult.

A few new bands (The Electric Soft Parade being one) latched on nicely but yeah, it was definitely an outer-indie niche rather than a mainstream thing by 2002

Oh yeah Cmon Kids is definitely one of these

ESP frontman told me it was his favourite album ever

People often forget this, but even fucking Gomez were considered to part of that lot at one point. At the time people always focused on Ben Ottewell's voice and the bands supposed "blues" fixations, but I'd say their output from 1998-2002 mines a similar Beta Band type of territory, they just did it in a very lightweight way.

Although eventually they got bored of that approach, decided to start making straightforward pop/rock records, signed to Dave Matthews' label and decided to make a name for themselves on the American jam band scene, which is just ugh.

oh absolutely Gomez! In Our Gun maybe even qualifies

Yeah, In Our Gun is the one that sticks out in my mind the most. Maybe a few things from Liquid Skin, Machismo and that Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline compilation, too.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Well, I guess if it wasn't Blur then it had to be Modern Life is Rubbish. I wonder how many of those 18 people who voted for Parklife have actually listened to it recently.

The Magic Whip over The Great Escape is foolishness

Eight of you. My fucking god. Although presumably 7 of them are NV socks

The Magic Whip over fucking Think Tank is foolishness!

Well, those results seems about right to me! In fact, the results are pretty close to my own ranking, except for the self-titled one being lower and 13 being higher on the list (the latter of which I'd expected).

Inspired by this thread I listened to the Great Escape again last week, and I wasn't half as annoyed by it as I expected to be. I don't think it'll go up in my ranking, but I can still enjoy it. And the Universal is really really gorgeous.
'Dan Abnormal' might still be my least favourite Blur album track. And while 'Entertain Me' starts out great, I dislike the chorus.

Remembered my password too late to vote but I would've gone for 13

Eight of you. My fucking god. Although presumably 7 of them are NV socks

the good half of TGE would've been my vote if I voted, the one track I remember hearing off Magic Whip has probably stopped me from ever listening to Blur ever again

which I'm fine with

so yeah obv I wd've spammed the vote for that tragedy, If I Did It

I never realised 13 was so popular - not just on here, I've found a few other 'rank the albums' things online where it's placed 2nd to Parklife. It's an album I admire and like in parts but I can see why people love it. The little instrumental bits between songs are good.

It's interesting to see this re-evaluation of 13. When it came out it was seen as a bit of a patchy mess of a record with very little through-line. It's still not a perfect record. Lots of nothingy tracks (don't like Trailerpark or 1992 very much), but it's also got some of their best songs. In retrospect it's maybe one of their most enjoyable records.

I think Trailerpark is great, fwiw

and 1992. Where now for dog latin

Really surprised Great Escape is so low

Guess I have to give Magic Whip another shot

I still see 13 as a patchy mess, just it's a patchy mess that I like more now than I did in the late '90s. I wrote '1992' off at the time as being a lesser version of 'Sing', but now I find its use of noise compelling.

Damon should really stay the fuck away from using falsetto.

I don't know how much company I'll have, but expanded 13 also includes Music Is My Radar, which is actually one of my favorite non-album singles. Kind of Can, I guess. I was really excited when it came out, and then somewhat let down by Think Tank. The b-sides were pretty great as well.

I hated 'Music Is My Radar' when it first came out, but now I prefer it to about half of 13.

I always hated how the British Leisure didn't have "I Know," and the US one didn't have "Sing."

I bought 13 when I was 13. It was probably the turning point in my music listening habits. Prior to that purchase, my favorite album was Saturday Teenage Kick by Junkie XL. 13 will always be my favorite Blur album, warts and all.

xp the US version didn't have Sing??
that's like the main reason for owning it

'I Know' is fucking garbage.

13 belongs in the bracket of post-britpop millennial ambition with idk OK Computer, Six and other things I probably like too much

― an uptempo Pop/Hip Hop mentality (imago), Thursday, 30 March 2017 20:41 (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm interested in expanding on this because I think there are probably some more really good examples of late-'90s psychedelic/proggy indie (the Gorky's thread revive got me thinking, as did listening to bands I'd previously ignored this past week like The Soundtrack of Our Lives and pre-Mobile Disco Simian). I think Clinic might fit in somewhere? Also I'm just fascinated by those between-scene eras that are often talked about as creative wastelands but never really are.

This poll is almost right.

think tank deserves better

Watching a dance floor clear in summer '03 when the duck call in "Crazy Beat" started has sullied my memory.

Think Tank is pretty great if you drop Crazy Beat, definitely top 3 for me

^^

and with modern technology, you can drop crazy beat!

Although I choose not to, because I enjoy the track and find it odd how it's always been singled out for criticism as if it's one of the worst things the band have done, which of course it isn't.

They did worse earlier.

Yeah, there's a couple of things on Leisure that are worse, and some real stinkers among the b-sides.

Although, Blur were a far better b-sides band that they're generally given credit for.

*than

Hmm, I'd go MLIR > Parklife > Blur > TGE > Leisure > TT > 13. I struggle to recall anything from the last two, and 13 in particular has so much flab, and really only three good songs.

13 is the least dated

Blur and Modern Life is Rubbish are the two I find myself returning to the most. I like 13 more now than I did almost 20 years ago.

I liked it better then, I think - it was my #17 album of the year. I imagine it would struggle to make the top 40 now, although the thought of having to listen to tons of 1999 music to find out is depressing. Maybe next year, after the inevitable Pitchfork article about how it was a pivotal year in popular music, uncoincidentally written by someone born in 1982.

Almost every album sparked the same contradictory emotions, you admired them, then you wanted to strangle them. It has to be Modern Life for Blue Jeans, don't you think? Out of Time is also damn near perfect.

Some bands I like to name check,
And one of them is BLUR,
Classic songs with a long history
Southern boys just like you and me.
Be-El-You-Are
Flashback to 1991,
Leisure was their first LP
Later on came Modern Life
Mallard art, and titles to match:
Chemical World, Starshaped,
For Tomorrow, Blue Jeans,
Kazoo kazoo you are mine,
Oily Water was my least favourite song,
Oily Water was my least favourite song.

Taken from the Blur tracks poll I did in 2011 - not votes for albums, but aggregating the votes for tracks to the albums they came from:

1. Parklife (2,786)
2. Modern Life Is Rubbish (1,808)
3. Non-album tracks (1,535)
4. Blur (1,491)
5. Great Escape (1,341)
6. Thinktank (1,221)
7. Thirteen (1,174)
8. Leisure (738)

If you swap #1 and #7 the results of the poll may be just about right. As an album Modern Life Is Rubbish is the most cohesive though.

Of course I refer to the aggregated tracks results.

Parklife was always a stronger end-to-end listen compared to Modern Life is Rubbish, which I always felt outstayed its welcome by a few tracks (it seems to fall off a little after 'Oily Water' for me) ... Nowadays, I'm far more likely to listen to Modern Life is Rubbish over Parklife, which feels like it's aged quite badly.

I mean, I don't want to say Parklife sounds dated, but it is strongly evocative of a very specific time which is at odds with now.

I always found Parklife a big drop-off after Modern Life Is Rubbish. Girls & Boys is such a crap song, I found it ridiculous the first time I heard it just when it had come out and the whole album was such a mixed bag and not really holding together.

This is crazy talk afaic - "Girls & Boys" is one of their standout tracks, and Parklife is pretty much their most cohesive album. I do agree with Turrican that it is too much of its time for it to resonate with current tastes, and I doubt I'll have the desire to listen to it again some time soon. (I do in fact think it also sounds "dated", but I've never understood why that's such a pejorative. Revolver sounds dated, Thriller and Bandwagonesque sound dated, "In da Club" sounds dated. So what?)

I'm listening to Think Tank for the first time in years. It could definitely do with editing and there are tracks here that do absolutely nothing ('Jets'?) but also it hold up a lot better than I expected

I'd say Out Of Time is up there with the best of their stuff. Actually, I probably did say that (in that poll more than a decade ago).

Is this the current Blur thread? They have just had a disastrous set at Coachella.

the crowd for blur at coachella was so embarassing damon im so sorry i wasn't there pic.twitter.com/k60LxJj8a7

— nicole (@cupidschok3hold) April 14, 2024

with all due respect (I quite enjoyed the set and Blur in general), it was sort of weird that they were on the main stage

i dont really understand who coachella is supposed to be for?

they have gen z fans aplenty throughout the world but idk if many of them were likely to be at coachella

a happier vid from a few days back

Audience member nails “Parklife” with @blurofficial on 4/10/24 at Fox Theatre in Pomona. #blur pic.twitter.com/rNmXXf7Dmy

— Beaker (@Beakerlives) April 11, 2024

They were the best set that I saw yesterday, don't care how it coma across live. We're talking about it on the Coachella thread while it was happening.

i had never listened to the magic whip before today, just not sure what i could reasonably expect from it and no one seemed enthused about it so why check it out? well, it's. great

Easily my least favourite but thanks for prompting me to give it another go

You know what ivy, you might be right. I don't think I gave this more than a few cursory listens over the years. Maybe it just wasn't what I wanted from Blur in 2015. Maybe I just didn't need a Blur album in 2015. Or maybe I was sceptical about a new record back then and found it lacking ("Where are the songs?" etc.

But listening now, I wouldn't hesitate to call it an extension of the vibes they experimented with on the 1997 s/t album with this scrappy post-punk sound and plenty of squiggly lo-fi electronic noises.

And yeah, the songwriting could be stronger. When you have a band who are so recognisable through their tropes I can forgive myself for getting an uncanny feeling on hearing this as their first record in over a decade. The trappings of Graham's guitar style, Damon's vocal and lyrical stylings, it was overfamiliar by then.

Distance can really help with appreciating a record. When this came out, the most concerning thing for me was "Is it going to live up to their previous stuff?" There was a rush to dive in and come out with an opinion. That's not necessarily the best way to get into a record, but zeitgeists are zeitgeists.

Being able to listen to this on its own terms is a pleasure. There's a lot more to this record than I first assumed. It's a lot better realised and less clunky than I first gave it credit for.

I thought it was "fine..." at the time, some decent stand out tracks, and so forth.

Better than those "holding" singles tracks that came out a year or so before.

I didn't play it much, but I did think I don't need any more Blur.

FF to the "Darren" album, and oh i now have two versions. One that's supposed to dance around the room, and one that you can sit in the middle of.

It's ok, but that's all now, no more... Plz.

officially beginning to think "thought i was a spaceman" is the best blur song

definitely could be dropped at the end of a dj set :)

i checked out the ballad of darren as well and it felt like a 37-minute nap to me, but i'll try to spend more time with it. idk magic whip somehow feels like a genuine follow-up to think tank, whereas ballad of darren felt like an attempt to make a less embarrassing great escape (yawn)

Spaceman is really good, although it does share a lot of DNA with songs like Battle and Strange News From Another Star

Darren really flags in the second half, but I really REALLY like Barbaric and would probably stick it in a top 20, if not top 10 Blur songs

Spaceman was my favourite on Magic Whip for years, might still be, and I don't think it's comparable to Battle or Strange News really, but it's probably the closest TMW gets to a Damon solo thing - the megaphone voice, iPad 80s rhythm machine, On Melancholy Hill-ish synth high notes, it's a grabbag of 2010s Damon trademarks put to imo their natural dazzling peak before he started overdoing it for me.

I'm probably too close to The Magic Whip as an experience - I'd been on the Blur forums (and, at that point the centre of things, Veikko's fan forums) for a few years and it's the most I've ever felt wrapped up in the hype around an album (and I really don't get how this was a decade ago already). Just makes me happy to listen to. Was still there to see The Ballad of Darren unfold too but that was like five minutes ago.